


—to remake myself

by pixiepower



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artists, Emotions, Inspiration, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, docent and day camp counselor hansol vernon chwe, mutual muses, my love letter to xu minghao’s art and the way it makes me feel, painting and poetry, piercer and resident artist xu minghao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:42:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24296041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiepower/pseuds/pixiepower
Summary: The campers get dropped off at 7:30 in the morning by the fountain in front of the museum, where Hansol meets them with his easy smile and his buzzed, dyed head and his black Docent t-shirt, and says, “Let’s feel something today.” And they meet him where he is, broad minds and tiny hands and incisive questions.To think that he can bring art into their lives, their homes, if even for a moment?It’s his favorite part of working here.Well, that, and—
Relationships: Chwe Hansol | Vernon/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 20
Kudos: 151





	—to remake myself

**Author's Note:**

> title from a letter written by vincent van gogh to his sister, 1890/02/19
> 
>  **note:** there is one brief mention of needles present in the context of minghao’s piercing job. there is no detailed description of use. if you need additional warnings please do not hesitate to reach out!
> 
> thank you, chris, for this [beautiful art](https://twitter.com/petalteeth/status/1264791574875160578?s=21) of tattooed hao from this fic! your friendship is invaluable to me!!

Hansol’s hands trace bold, dark lines, fingertips moving on the slow ripples of texture, some whipcorded thing under all this color. Blue sky, ocean, field, makes way for orange, the red of it blending into deep, true black. And on the other side, serene, tender teals and greens giving in to bursting yellow, facing the sun and becoming it.

What is it like to make art like this? To be able to make something from nothing and carve the body beautiful? Hansol’s fingertips linger too long over sunflowers, and he forgets to ask the question.

Luckily, kids don’t have the struggle he does looking at all of this.

“He matches the painting!” little Hyejee declares, her arms stuck out straight in front of her. One is reaching fruitlessly for the canvas on the wall, the other grabbing for Minghao’s arm, pushing Hansol’s fingers out of the way and practically smacking the sunflowers with her tiny palm. A high-five, the closest she’ll ever get to holding Van Gogh in her hands in her lifetime. Hansol withdraws his hands entirely.

Hansol laughs as Minghao holds his lean arm out in front of the Van Gogh, looking proud and sheepish in equal measure as everyone clambers to get a better look.

“Why do you like this painting, oppa?” Areum asks, and Minghao looks surprised and pleased and altogether too much like he wants to pick Areum up, which  _ would _ be too much, actually. He sits cross-legged in front of the thin rope separating art from artists, the plasticky crinkle of the campers’ smocks as they mirror him thunderous in the hall. A pond of frogs in the middle of the European wing.

The hand of Minghao’s other arm finds the sunflowers, long fingers making strokes over the ink, settled flat like paint never has. “Let me answer your question with another question for everyone. What kind of feeling does this painting give you? Hansol has been talking with you all week so far about how art makes you feel things, right?”

“Sunflowers are a love flower! My mom’s favorite flower is sunflowers!”

“They’re yellow! Yellow is happy!”

Areum’s mouth is open, but no sound is coming out under the din. “Areum, what do you think?” Hansol asks gently. It’s loud enough that the sea of chatter parts for her to speak.

“It makes me feel like being quiet.”

Minghao tilts his head, something bittersweet in the smile that tugs at his lips, something fond in his eyes. “Yeah. It can be a little bit of both, right?”

Both of Minghao’s arms are splashed with color, and one hand goes to the  _ Three Sunflowers  _ at his bicep, thumb moving over the edges absentmindedly. The real thing halos his messy hair, a sky of spring behind his burgundy, but Hansol has spent plenty of time over the years looking at that, gold frame and all. His parents started managing the museum before he was born, and the museum acquired the painting far before that, and he watched as the museum flourished and changed, growing up alongside him, both with this profound appreciation for art at their center.

So Hansol figures no one can fault him if he, like his campers, finds himself instead drawn to the smaller version imprinted in skin.

“Vincent Van Gogh spent his life trying to be a good painter. An artist. It was his dream. He worked hard, and he struggled, and he painted his whole life, but he was also very sad, and had a difficult life,” Minghao says. The children are rapt.

Hansol nods, and shifts on the big settee he’s sharing with Areum and Yosook to lean his elbows on his knees. He says, “Lots of people say that’s what makes his paintings so special. That he painted with his heart, and made beautiful art even when he was sad or lonely.”

“He’s famous! How could he be sad?” Jaehee asks, the soles of her little shoes bouncing as she kicks them on the floor straight out in front of her.

Minghao’s smile tucks into his cheek at one corner, and he looks at Hansol, eyebrows knit together as he thinks. How do you broach a subject like this?

Kids are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for. Hansol doesn’t know why people think they can’t just have a conversation; his friends growing up would constantly complain about annoying younger siblings, and that seemed to him an unfathomable concept. Sure, he and Sofia didn’t always run on the same wavelength, but there was a mutual understanding between them that said,  _ I know what this is like. We’re here for each other. _

The campers are much the same. They get dropped off at 7:30 in the morning by the fountain in front of the museum, where Hansol meets them with his easy smile and his buzzed, dyed head and his black  _ Docent _ t-shirt, and says, “Let’s feel something today.” And they meet him where he is, broad minds and tiny hands and incisive questions. 

To think that he can bring art into their lives, their homes, if even for a moment?

It’s his favorite part of working here.

Well, that, and—

Minghao rests his chin on one hand, long fingers tucked into a loose fist, and says carefully, “He wasn’t famous when he was alive. He always tried his best, but people didn’t buy his paintings or consider him a genius until afterward. Sometimes I try really hard to make a painting, and it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to. Have you ever felt like that?”

And from anyone else it might seem disingenuous, to be smiling, but there’s an understanding in the way Minghao smiles, encouraging and reassuring. A smile that says there are no wrong questions or answers. A smile that says  _ Art makes you feel things, right? How do you feel?  _ There is Minghao smiling at the kids, and Hansol smiling hopelessly at Minghao, and Hansol having a pretty clear idea of how it makes him feel.

“I practiced really hard and didn’t make the baseball team,” Kangseob says with a wistfulness beyond his years.

Hyejee frowns. “Yesterday I put too much tie-dye on the shirt we were dyeing, and I wanted to do it again because I changed my mind about the colors! And I wanted to do it again but Hansol-oppa said we didn’t have time and also we ran out of shirts because there weren’t any extras, and also I had changed my mind about the colors and put too much and also I was mad! Because I think it’s going to look bad, Myungho-oppa, I think it’s going to look bad.”

Nodding, Minghao’s smile softens even more. “If those things happened to me I might be pretty upset. Working hard on something and having it not go the way I want it to really sucks sometimes.”

The campers gasp delightedly at his  _ bad word,  _ and Hansol covers his face with a hand to laugh loudly under their tittering. Minghao’s grin is sly when he catches Hansol’s eye, his gaze sparkling, and Hansol snorts.

Hansol gives them their minute to recover from the shock and giggle fit before continuing the conversation. “I know what Myungho-hyung means. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase ‘everything happens for a reason.’ I don’t know if I agree with that, but I feel like until time-travel exists, I can’t dwell too long on things that already happened. I can’t change everything. I just have to let myself feel sad, and then get back up again and keep going. Sometimes you can make something good out of something bad. It might not be the painting you were trying to make, but it’s a new painting anyway, and you can be proud of that.”

Areum reaches out and holds Hansol’s hand, her little hand clutching his fingers, and he lets her. That softness is playing on Minghao’s face again as he looks up from where Hyejee and Seojun are sitting with their legs crossed to Hansol just behind them. His thumb absentmindedly moves over his  _ Three Sunflowers,  _ the pad of it pressing into the face of each one, and he smiles not at Hansol but at the tiles on the floor for a moment.

“Yeah. You can feel that way and still make something beautiful, like Van Gogh. You can always make something good happen.”

Hansol’s watch beeps with an alarm, and he frowns, eyes flicking between the time and Minghao’s easy, open body language.

“Speaking of the tie-dye shirts, I think it’s time to check out how they turned out after lunch, hm? All right, everybody. Thank you, Myungho, for spending so much time with us today.”

_ “Thank you, Myungho!!” _

All the little frogs leap up from their lilypads, and Hansol starts to shepherd them toward the exit of this wing. He has a hand up to headcount, finger hovering over the images of twelve little heads, until there’s a hand catching his arm, bright winding finger tattoos braceleting his wrist.

“Am I going to see you again today?” Minghao asks, almost breathless like he winded himself with the effort.

Hansol’s arm sings, and he turns in closer to say, “I can meet you at the studio after five when the kids are all picked up?”

Minghao’s smiling face is luminous, eyes crescents and cheeks glowing. A full moon in the middle of the day. “Okay. Yeah.” He seems to remember himself, letting go of Hansol’s hand and laughing a little. “I won’t keep you. Thank you for letting me be a part of that.”

“Of course.”

And when Hansol walks away, bringing up the rear of his train of campers, he wishes he had said  _ thank you,  _ too. Wishes his head didn’t absorb all this stimuli, sponge in the ocean, and blot out any hope he has of actually expressing himself properly. Almost wishes he didn’t have a notebook in his bedside table bursting at the binding with loose poems crammed into it about it all.

He chances a glance back at Minghao, and waves when he finds him smiling at him still.

•

Hansol’s footfall along the shiny floor feels like it echoes straight through to the sky in the middle of the night like this. He’s surprised to find that he isn’t afraid, of getting caught or finding something supernatural or accidentally spooking himself out of his bones with a stumble. (He does stumble, too; Minghao catches his forearm with a breathless sort of giggle and an admonishment, _Be_ _careful!)_ A boon of having grown up surrounded by marble and oils and a thousand deep-eyed faces reflecting lives lived a thousand times over. 

Hansol has hardly unlocked and pushed open the door to the studio when Minghao says in this unbelievable tone, “Wonder what people get up to in here.”

“What?”

“There’s already a dropcloth down,” Minghao teases with an arched eyebrow, voice laden with something purposeful and mirthful, his long legs moving past Hansol to settle his bag by the painter’s stool.

Hansol’s cheeks flare with heat, and Minghao’s are pink, too, his ears a little red under all his piercings, and, well, isn’t that something?

“I didn’t put that there,” Hansol says, too defensive.

The sound of Minghao’s giggle feels the same as the key turning in the lock. “I know. I did.”

Hansol stares vacantly at Minghao.

“By the time I get here everything is already unlocked,” Minghao admits. “It’s too much trouble to reroll and put up the cloth between sessions. And I don’t always want to move my work.” Minghao makes a little noise, his nose crinkling. “I do like painting at night, though. So thank you, for this.”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

Minghao’s smiling, the bridge of his nose still crinkled, and he scratches at it with the crimp of a paintbrush. He asks Hansol to put on music, so he does, choosing a playlist of songs that feel vast, a little melancholy in the way that the middle of the night always does. 

Two months into Minghao’s residency and Hansol can already feel the difference in the museum itself. 

It’s not huge to begin with. It started its life as a private collection, acquiring donations and works primarily through the generosity of others, selfless or otherwise. They don’t own it, insofar as none of the pieces belong to anyone named Vernon or Chwe, and, really, should art even  _ belong  _ to  _ anybody, _ but that’s a point to be argued at charity functions with the kids of the blowhards who think throwing money at something means they know everything about it. Hansol’s parents’ occupation and passion taught him early that you can feel when art means something to the artist, and he took that and ran with it all the way into the day camp curriculum.

Hansol wasn’t involved in Minghao’s selection, but can’t imagine that his mom could have possibly chosen anyone better. 

He remembers seeing Minghao’s paintings for the first time. That feeling never went away. 

He remembers meeting Minghao for the first time. That feeling never went away, either. 

Minghao’s on the floor, legs bracketing a new canvas, an ombré of little yellow bottles nestled in the crook of his left knee. Hansol is lying on the floor nearby, taken by the steadiness of his big hands as they unscrew the tops off the bottles and pours paint out onto the canvas, big palette knife in hand. Spreading out paint like butter, like mist, like aurora borealis.

He is so meticulous and deliberate with the paint, something about it free-flowing like he knows where it’s going and cannot stop until it gets there. Or is it because he drives on instinct that he can move like this? 

What is it like to have a grasp on expressing your feelings? To surround yourself with emotion and to open yourself up to it, to let it float around you and flow through you? Minghao seems like he has it together all the time, like he is just a vessel for his creative impulses and can direct it through himself to make something so unfathomably beautiful, so raw, that Hansol wants to sink his hands into it and let the rest of his body follow.

All Hansol has are his clumsy words, everything balled up in his heart getting the better of him every time.

Sheafs and scraps and sheets of paper littered with half-chewed attempts at poetry shoved messy into his notebook, all those mixed metaphors and repurposed words of people who  _ felt  _ before him to try to grasp in one shaky hand how Minghao’s art makes him feel. He has to put all these feelings somewhere, lest he tumble into a void of his own making.

“Hyung, can I ask you something?” Hansol asks quietly, tapping his old doctor’s-office pen against his ankle.

When Minghao looks at Hansol, his eyes are tired-looking but wide open, just like the rest of his face. “Anything.”

“Why do you paint?”

Minghao’s hands are covered in paint, long fingers smeared daffodil where he made waves among the gesso and acrylic, and he wipes the side of his hand onto one leg of his coveralls.

“It’s the only thing I can do,” Minghao says after a moment. “To get it all out. I take in the masters—” he smiles brightly down at his arm where  _ Three Sunflowers  _ bloom, “—and I put out… this. And then my heart is in everyone else’s hands, right? I like knowing that I felt something when I made it, and that anyone who sees it will feel something, too.”

Hansol thinks that’s unbelievably brave. To put yourself so wholly in the hands of anyone and everyone else. Minghao seems to run at it with open arms and open eyes. Something beats in Hansol’s chest about it.

“I mean. I have to.” Minghao’s face scrunches again, his smile unwavering. “If I don’t…”

“You feel like you’re just a body in space?” Hansol finishes, looking down at the black-hole doodle on his lone scrap of paper, scribbled ink under tentative prose.

Minghao glances at Hansol, yawns a little, transforming the involuntary stretch of his face into something winking and silly as he laughs his exhaustion off. “Exactly. Not just in the metaphorical sense, either, I guess. The galaxies and the stars and the planets. I’m not into astrology the way Jun is but I think there’s a lot to be said about its influence on us.”

“I get that. Totally. Uh, I read something once, this transcript of the American space mission Apollo 10. They were orbiting the moon, getting ready for another flight to land. They were out there maybe a week. You read in all these conversations they have that they weren’t exactly, you know, poets,” Hansol flushes a little just saying the word, “but you see how easy it is, when you share that kind of overwhelming thing with someone, to feel that emotion.”

“Yeah?”

Minghao is looking at him in full now, head tilted and eyes focused, thin little palette knife tucked behind his ear, and there’s something so bolstering about it. Intoxicated, Hansol lets his excitement run away with him, going on, “The astronauts started calling each other ‘babe,’ which, you know, real close, affectionate term of endearment. And these are very… it was the 1960s, right, and they were so traditionally masculine. It’s so interesting.”

“How would they have said it? In English?”

Hansol’s heart hammers.  _ “Babe,”  _ he sounds out.

_ “Babe,”  _ Minghao repeats, and it looks like it tastes like wonder in his mouth. He looks at Hansol, and he looks at his feet, and he smiles a little.  _ “Babe.” _

The astronauts, less than a handful of them, were so caught up in it. The vastness of the universe, hurtling toward them, them careening back toward it in some slingshot, into mood and beauty. They felt something so overwhelming that they reached for one another, drew them close with word alone, let each other have some place in their heart. They called each other  _ babe,  _ and Hansol looks at Minghao, painting with heart and humming along to the low throb of music Hansol put on and licking the taste of  _ babe  _ from his teeth.

Hansol thinks about gravity, about the feeling of pressure on your body from all sides. He wonders if there’s a lightness to spacewalking that explains the way your heart feels like it expands to fill your body. Like you’re just a vessel for emotion. If it’s because you’re floating, or because the weight is so immense that it has to spread out for you to survive.

_ when you’re out there all you have are stars/ when you’re out there all you have are feelings _

“Can I borrow this?” Hansol asks, holding up a card-stock pamphlet from the stack of brochures on the floor by the door. 

It’s black and white, the seasonal exhibition insert featuring a blurb about Minghao’s residency at the bottom, his picture a good third of the sheet. There’s probably a metaphor somewhere in the fact that he’s writing down his poem on its edges, in the margins next to an ink-streaked rendering of the face Hansol thinks could easily be immortalized in constellation form.

“Sure,” Minghao says absentmindedly. A beat later he actually looks over and that’s when he blanches, a flush curling over his ears. “Ah, Solie, what do you want with that… oh, no, wait.” And Minghao rifles through his bag, pulling out a thick sheet of recycled paper, sumptuously textured with flecks of black and threads of color, warm like a sweater. It looks hand-pressed, and Minghao taps at one of his dangling earrings with the back of his palette knife, the corner of his lips quirking up. “Try this instead.”

Hansol’s fingers trace the lacy edges of it where it’s soft. “Wow, hyung, are you sure? This feels expensive.”

“They say it’s impossible to value things you made yourself, so I’m going to disagree with you,  _ babe,”  _ Minghao says, coy, tucking his tongue into the pocket of his cheek. “We can call it even for after-hours access to the workspace.”

And it probably says something that Hansol could have just lent Minghao the key, but that’s not what Minghao asked for.

•

“You’re going to breathe in, and then exhale when it goes through, okay?”

“Okay,” Hansol whines, swallowing the sound back a second too late. He chokes on his own inhale, and Minghao pulls his hands back to laugh. It’s not mean, even if it should be a little horror movie-esque with the giant needle in his hand.

The parlor doesn’t feel as much like Minghao as Hansol expected it to. When he imagined it, he thought it would be colorful, cool, something to sink into among velvet and curtain.  _ “I’m not the only piercer,”  _ Minghao had smiled, but it fell a little flat among all the stainless steel and clinical fixtures. At the very least, his corner of the back has some framed originals, and his cart is laden with texture, wood-lidded jars for cotton pads and alcohol wipes, and a pretty vintage box for his marking pens. Hansol wants to take it and swipe all the warmth across the walls, give something to Minghao that feels like him.

Maybe that would do something to settle his nerves. 

But the anxiety is settling in, and Hansol knows every nervous word out of his mouth is pitching higher, squeaky like training wheels, like his first crush. (He doesn’t remember his name anymore, just Pokémon light-up shoes and messy brown hair and the funny feeling in his ten-year-old stomach.)

Minghao starts to hum under his breath along to the music he’s playing, something pretty and sweeping in Mandarin, as he preps everything. It’s all Hansol can do to keep his stomach still instead of the outside of his body, which is arguably more important in a situation like this. Everything feels strange except for Minghao’s hand on the side of his neck, Minghao’s thumb tracing the peach-fuzz edge of his earlobe.

Minghao says, “Ready,  _ babe?” _ in the most soothing voice, and Hansol is distinctly  _ not _ , but when he inhales to say it, there’s a quick pressure on his ear. Suddenly Minghao’s nimble fingers are moving, gentle, and then Minghao is beaming at him. “Good. One more.”

And it’s less than a verse later that the little black titanium studs are shining in Hansol’s ears, and he’s holding the mirror up to his face, turning his head every which way. Whiplash seems imminent.

“Oh, wow. Those are for real, huh?” Hansol says.

When Hansol lowers the hand mirror, Minghao is smiling. “Yeah. You did it. How do you feel?”

That’s a loaded question, especially under the soft lamplight of Minghao’s gaze. Hansol steals Minghao’s own trick to deflect. “How does it look?”

Minghao pulls one glove off with a little latex-y  _ snap.  _ His bare hand, a little warm, comes to the back of Hansol’s jaw and tilts him toward the actual light, and there’s an appraising look on his face.

“Perfect.”

Hansol meets Minghao’s eyes, and there’s nothing but fondness and pride there. “Then I feel good.”

Using his hands on his knees to stand and start cleaning up, Minghao makes a face, a scrunched-nose half-laugh thing that adds another thick layer of varnish to the art project Hansol accidentally started in the pit of his stomach. “Solie, that’s not a good reason.”

“Says who?” Hansol gives Minghao a loose grin from across the room, spinning in the chair now that the needle is in the sharps container. Everything feels a little loose, his body humming with the aftershocks of adrenaline, that first deep breath after you get off a rollercoaster. “I like that you like it. I like that you’re proud of how it turned out. They’ll make me think of you.” He shrugs. “That seems like a good reason to me.”

Minghao runs a tense hand through the back of his hair, and all Hansol can see is fingers tugging at deep red on the way back down. He lets out this long breath into the trash can. Hansol doesn’t feel sorry.

A beat lingers. The song playing fades out, and a new one begins. “What made you want to get your ears pierced?” Minghao asks instead.

“I never gave it a lot of thought growing up, really. When I started doing my hair like this in high school I think I felt like it drew enough attention to me without needing to add anything else. But, uh.” Hansol stares at the studs in his own ears in the mirror. “I guess recently I’ve been drawn to the idea a lot more.”

“The idea?” Minghao’s voice curls around it, honeyed and hopeful.

Hansol swallows. “Yeaaah,” he stretches. He holds it several seconds too long, and it shakes into a laugh, low and staccato. 

That makes Minghao laugh, his shy giggly thing, and Hansol scrubs at the side of his mouth with the back of his hand, knowing that he has that  _ Minghao-stupid _ grin splitting his face open again.

Minghao grumbles through a smile, “Fine, fine, fine.” He lobs a cotton ball at Hansol, who kicks at it. It silently makes its way to the floor and rolls harmlessly under the vinyl bed.

“What about you?”

“What do you mean, what about me?” Minghao’s ears blush with something Hansol wants to watch bloom like paint drying.

Hansol gestures to Minghao’s ears, then his own. “When did it start for you? Why did you become a piercer?”

A sound of acknowledgement,  _ mn,  _ then, “By accident.” Minghao turns and shoots Hansol a smile, lopsided, showing teeth. “I thought for a while I wanted to be a tattoo artist, actually.”

Hansol raises his eyebrows in surprise. Minghao seems easily the type who could excel in pressing indelible artwork into skin, soothing and rhythmic and personable.

“The parlor I apprenticed with had all these resident artists who were doing really incredible work, pioneering their own styles. Genuine artistry. They looked at my portfolio, said they were finishing up with their current apprenticeships, but they’d let me start with piercing to get a feel for the clientele. Culture fit and all that. I got most of these—” he gestures vaguely to his chest and arms, “—done while I was there. My eighteen months came and went, and suddenly they were downsizing and couldn’t take on tattoo apprenticeships anymore.” Minghao shrugs. “It wasn’t their fault. Rent went up, and sometimes timing is just bad.”

Hansol makes an understanding noise and lies back down. Minghao shrugs again, closes another jar, and sits, wide-legged, on the little rolling stool. He slides himself in close to the bed and table, adjusting the angle so Hansol is lying more comfortably.

“My niche ended up being with these stoic, alternative types to start with. I think they took one look at me and felt a kindred spirit, which isn’t entirely wrong, but they weren’t usually much for conversation. Tipped well, though.”

“Yeah?”

A tattooed hand hovers over Hansol’s stomach, a handful of inches above his body, but Hansol feels it like flames dance in Minghao’s palm. “Mhm. ‘til Mingyu.” Minghao’s thoughtful face softens again, tinted with a little fond exasperation. “He bounded in and talked my ear off while I did his navel piercing, and he was so happy with it I couldn’t shake him. Reminded me why I wanted to do all of it in the first place.”

“‘You can always make something good happen?’”

Minghao laughs, pulling his hand back and rubbing at his jaw. “Something like that. I was feeling fulfilled creatively doing my painting, still getting tattooed by my friends, and I guess my reputation grew.” When Hansol turns at his tone Minghao looks bashful, now, proud and shy in equal measure. “The residency is changing my life.”

“Mine too, you know,” Hansol says, eyes closing a little. He folds his hands together over his stomach, resting together on his big t-shirt.

Hansol’s eyes open slow when Minghao’s fingers walk over his cupped hands while he talks. It’s absentminded, but through his eyelashes Hansol can see the symbols inked into his fingers, the colorful striping on the backs of Minghao’s hands. He can tell it’s Minghao’s own design, wonders who he trusted to impress it indelibly like this. But he closes his eyes again, lets Minghao’s hands glide quietly over his, and considers his earlobes, barely aching. Hansol thinks that if whoever did them is anything like Minghao, he’d trust them to make art of his skin, too.

•

Hansol wants to reach out and touch Minghao’s ears. It’s not a new sensation, but it is made somewhat worse by their cherry-sweet contrast against his new collection of sketches. Minghao is flipping through them quickly, avoiding eye contact with Hansol, and Hansol tries not to look, but he sees page after page of galaxies and cosmos, blues and blacks and pinks and silvers swirling, so the voice in his head that constantly mutters  _ babe babe babe  _ opens his mouth and says quietly, “We should drive out of the city. Go see the stars.”

When Minghao looks up at Hansol, there’s a smile on his face like a solar flare.

And so they do.

The ride over is that comfortable kind of thrumming, busy quiet, Minghao’s driving playlist already halfway through by the time they start their journey. Hansol can’t even say he’s surprised by how easy the conversation is, how the bottoms of his feet tingle in his high-tops when Minghao laughs, how when they get out of the car at the park their stream of consciousness never breaks.

When the blanket is creased from sitting up and lying down, the snacks are gone, and the sound of the city is all that echoes in the distance, Hansol reaches for Minghao’s travel palette, lifting off the wet paper towel from the pigment and looking at the mess inside.

“I’ve never really been good at painting,” Hansol says thoughtfully, thumb pressing into the paper and coming away tinted blue. He looks up and finds Minghao’s broad hands outstretched in front of him, a little  _ kumbaya,  _ a little benediction. 

Painted all over his face is a shy sort of hope, something knowing and kind. “Paper can be daunting since it’s permanent. You should paint here,” Minghao says, meaning his palms. His fingers are spread, long and beautiful, and Hansol’s brain floods with a crossword puzzle of want.

Hansol laughs, somewhere between nervous and eager, and says, “Okay.”

Minghao giggles at the first broad, chilly swipe of green over his palms, turning them over like he’s going to press them all over Hansol, who kicks out a leg defensively, laughing all the while. Minghao is all elbows and legs, and Hansol gets the feeling it’s better for him that Minghao’s hands are occupied. 

They’re both breathing a little hard when they settle again, Hansol’s hand wrapped around Minghao’s wrist as he swirls vines of lime green over the deep. It goes faster than Hansol wants it to.

“What kind of practice is it if I run out of room?” Hansol jokes, flicking pastel-pink over the green field, freckling the suggestion of flowers into Minghao’s skin.

Minghao hums, eyes trained on where Hansol’s hands meet his. “I have empty space on my back.”

Hansol freezes, the jumble of words in his mind finally quieting. Minghao is still, too, as they read each other’s expressions for a moment. Hansol looks down at his fingers where they trail delicately over the lines of Minghao’s painted palms. His fingertips are the same streaky color as Minghao’s hands, which aren’t quite dry yet. 

He feels a little like he’s stepping out into space, feeling the cord at his waist tighten with each step. Why not? He’s already wandered out this far.

“Yeah, hyung. Turn over?”

Minghao does the worst possible thing, then. His long fingers find the back collar of his shirt, and beyond all expectation the sound of the fabric rumpling actually cleaves some of the tension. Hansol has hardly a moment to register Minghao’s shirt being cast aside before he’s lying on his stomach, arms folded under his chin, palm-up, untouched.

There’s such a contrast between his rainbowed arms, leanness winding up under the back of Minghao’s head, and the unbelievable expanse in front of him, a blank slate of toned back muscles.

“Can I sit back here?” Hansol asks, gesturing uselessly at the small of Minghao’s back, considering Minghao isn’t looking at him. “So it’s easier to reach?” He’s not sure how his voice even made it out of his throat, past his teeth.

Minghao gets it anyway, makes an affirmative noise, some sound caught in his own mouth about it, and Hansol swings a leg over the hair’s-breadth of Minghao’s waist. His knees sink into blanket, dew-wet and car-heater-warm, his body a bridge over a river. Still, now, but a tension like white water.

At the first stroke of the brush Minghao hisses through his teeth, then giggles, and Hansol has to hold his breath. “Cold,” Minghao says against his inner forearm.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Minghao says, and so it is.

Quiet settles over them as Hansol uses the widest, flattest brush to lay white across the triangle of Minghao’s back. His technique is clumsy, if not absent altogether, and Minghao is making a concerted effort below him to keep his breathing easy and even. Hansol thinks it might not make much of a difference to how it turns out, considering he has no finesse.

White gives way to thick coral and green and yellow, Hansol letting the paint drip freely from the brushes, and every time the paint hits Minghao’s skin, fallen like stars from the vast distance of an inch or so, he lets out this little noise. It sounds weird, like his mouth is clamped over his arm. Hansol moves the brush, makes clouds and swirling galaxies over the line of his shoulders, and catches his tongue between his teeth.

Neither of them seem to be particularly capable of filling a silence this heavy.

Hansol tries, says, “It’s a lot less pressure to do this back here where you can’t see how bad it looks.”

As Minghao laughs and readies a response, it’s suddenly cut off, cleaved in that way where the knife pushes but doesn’t go all the way through, when Hansol’s fingers push the long hair at the back of Minghao’s neck to paint up the nape. Hansol’s thumbnail runs over the skin there, pushing stray paint away from the soft strands. Goosebumps freckle the skin, and Minghao’s breath hitches.

A self-consciousness settles over Hansol’s own shoulders, a worry there’s a line he’s crossing. “Is this okay, hyung?”

It takes a second, and Hansol’s thumb is still brushing over hair, but Minghao tells him with steadying breaths, “Yeah. It. It feels good.”

“Okay,” Hansol says quietly.

Color blooms over Minghao’s back with each passing minute until it looks like it was always meant to be there, clumsy and thick but bright like the ink in his arms. Hansol tucks the brush under the field of Minghao’s hair, swiping the start of a ribbon of deep blue where Minghao is most sensitive, and tries not to open his mouth and curl the high  _ mn  _ Minghao lets out over his palate. Paint shifts on the skin of Minghao’s shoulderblades as he inhales and exhales. His whole body is taut under the brush, soft bristles gliding over the delicate knobs of his spine, the swirl of blue like a comet in negative. 

Hansol’s thumb spreads out a thick spot of paint close to Minghao’s waist, and Minghao shivers, exhales an unanswered, “Hansol…”

Minghao’s breath is coming more and more unevenly, punctuated with these clipped little groans, and Hansol feels like he’s barely breathing himself. Minghao’s body shifts under him, and Hansol can practically see his blood pressure spike in response, the steady uphill rollercoaster climb of want reaching its inevitable apex, and he can’t— he can’t—

“It’s done,” Hansol says, panicked, putting both hands on Minghao’s bare waist to give himself leverage to clamber off. He lands ass-first on the blanket, shaking out his hands while Minghao’s back is still turned. Closing his eyes, Hansol tilts his face up to the sky, dark and dark and dark. If he tries he can see the stars flickering through his eyelids.

“I—I can’t turn over yet.” It’s so quiet, Hansol can hear Minghao swallow, the tacky sound of it clinging to his explanation: “It has to dry. But, ah. Will you take a picture? I want to see it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” Hansol replies, fumbling for his phone. “It’s gonna have flash, close your eyes.”

Minghao makes that acknowledging little  _ mn  _ noise again, lower in his mouth now, and Hansol kicks up on his knees for a better angle. The painting looks good, to his surprise, even just in the dim of the streetlight, and Hansol wonders if there are any poets who ever thought the canvas is what makes the work beautiful. 

The flash goes off, throwing Minghao into a storm of overwashed lightning, and when Hansol pulls up the picture he chuckles.

“What?” Minghao asks.

“Cryptidian,” is all Hansol says, laughing when Minghao laughs.  _ As if you were on fire from within./ The moon lives in the lining of your skin. _

Minghao says, muffled a little in his arms, “The  _ yeren  _ of your dreams.”

“A  _ yeren?” _

Minghao’s phone pings in his pocket upon receipt of the photo, and it’s only then that Minghao pushes up on his elbows, turning around where he lays. “Ah, this mythic creature. A cryptid. He’s this gangling wild man who leaves giant footprints in the mud of Hubei, in the overgrowth among the mountains. Shennongjia, I think. People say he doesn’t really exist, there’s no proof, but.”

“Like Bigfoot.” 

After he manages it, Hansol’s throat goes dry, Minghao’s loose jeans pushed dangerously low. He’s wearing designer underwear, and above the shoved-down waistband there are tattoos peeking, prints on his hipbones, one a block of dark, patchy black ink, written strokes like characters, the other bright and earthy and natural, maybe floral. Hansol has never seen them before.

“Yeah. I like that. Bigfoot is a lot like the  _ yeren,  _ actually. He wants to be at peace but he wants to be known. And he leaves traces for people to find. There are these stories of people meeting him in the 70s, face to face, close enough to touch, and they went back to the site in the morning and found prints and hair. Like a gift, like  _ remember me.” _

Minghao’s knees are bent as he talks, and he closes his eyes and tips his head back, this impossible line of his body from the long, untidy burgundy of his hair down his neck and chest and —  _ God,  _ his nipples are pierced, of  _ course _ they are — and those tattoos, new art to discover. Hansol wants to learn them so well he can be a docent, guide along their hollows, explain to curious eyes each splash and scar. He wants to be an expert. The world’s foremost.

His fingers are reaching out, brushing against hipbone before he even knows it, muscle memory and pounding heart throwing him to the  _ yeren,  _ teeth bared and eyes wild.

Something like embarrassment flashes over Minghao’s face when his eyes snap open at the touch, his laugh quiet in the night. He scrambles to get up properly, but seems to remember he has paint on his hands, his lips parted in surprise and something else. Minghao stares at his palms, the yellows and blues, at the faint blushing red of his leaned-upon elbows under all his ink. “I don’t think the  _ yeren  _ knows what to do with his body either,” he says with this anxious little smile, and he looks at Hansol, and looks, and looks.

And Hansol swallows, and hopes, and hopes. “Can—?”

Minghao nods imperceptibly. He keeps looking, lips quirked, as Hansol leans over his body, fingertips making way for a palm pressed against Minghao’s waist, tentative. The press of his lips on Minghao is gentle, testing, feather-light, horsehair-paintbrush-light. Hansol can feel him inhale deeply in the space between, air rushing between their mouths, and he moves to pull away, but hands hold him fast, those broad, beautiful hands cupping his face and pulling him in.

“It’s okay,  _ babe, _ yes,” Minghao breathes, the gasp of it like a star winking out, all bright burn. 

He gives all his body weight to Hansol, who draws him close by the hips and just kisses him, an endlessness of mouths moving soft and kind and learning. The sway of his back is earthtilting.

Minghao’s hands slide over Hansol’s face, thumbs tracing his cheekbones, palms moving on his jaw. His mouth is the thing of every poem Hansol’s ever read or written or thought about writing, the way he laughs before returning to Hansol’s lips, the way he kisses Hansol’s teeth by accident, the way it’s hungry-but-not-starving, all  _ birthday dinner _ and not  _ broken fast. _

Hansol gives up the body for the mouth, figuring a cave is all mouth and then cavern and no one ever says it needs more. His inhale chases Minghao’s exhale when Minghao pulls back.

“Oh, you look so—” Minghao says helplessly, his hands pushing through Hansol’s hair and running palm-first over the contours of his face.

Hansol feels slack under Minghao’s caress, broad against lean, knees aching and trembling on the blanket. “Sorry,” he says. And he means it, despite the wide, toothy smile he can’t fight off.

Minghao just shakes his head, fingertips dragging over Hansol’s eyebrows and nose and lips and jaw, and he leans in again before stopping himself short of Hansol’s mouth. “We have to—” he laughs, a breathless sound Hansol wants to drift away into, “—we have to stop, Hansol-ah.”

“Why?” Hansol can’t find the faculty to be embarrassed that it sounds like a whine.

“Because,” Minghao says, and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, “if we don’t stop I’m going to do something very reckless in this public park, and I don’t want that on our conscience. Or our criminal records. I was already— ah, yeah.”

Hansol feels his whole face brighten, and his skin rush hot. “Okay. Yeah.”

When they stand, Hansol tugging Minghao up by a hand, Minghao very carefully and deliberately pulls his pants up the rest of the way before closing up his paint pan, and Hansol hides behind the flap of the blanket. He does an okay job folding it up, and a worse one trying to look like he’s not staring. Minghao pulls his shirt back on, and it feels like a visceral loss.

Minghao gets into the driver’s seat, and only then does Hansol see it, in the rearview mirror. “Oh, my God. Hyung.” 

Hansol feels swayed at the sight of his face, looking not just exactly as kiss-dazed as he feels but also smeared in paint, the sharp of his jaw shadowed in green and pink from the restless flutter of Minghao’s flowered hands.

“Sorry,” Minghao says, not sounding particularly apologetic, his face settled somewhere sweet, between bashful and pleased. “You’ll forgive me if I forgot about it for a second. I mean. It  _ was  _ an accident, but then…”

Rendered a little speechless, Hansol just lets Minghao drive, pink-green-beautiful on the wheel, and wonders if this is what all his paintings feel like, messy and purposeful and cherished.

•

The summer is filled with awe and inspiration, the cool blast of air conditioning preserving sweat-stick on skin and artwork alike. There’s something about it that feels one and the same to Hansol.

Every time he catches his reflection in glass terrine or the mirrors while he’s waiting for campers to be done in the bathroom, he can’t wipe the smile off his face. Warmth spreads across his chest at the memory of gentle hands and the mind’s-eye sight of paint smeared like hunger over the planes of his jaw and cheekbones.

The kids can see it, because of course they can. They see easily that he’s melting under more than the midday sun in the sculpture garden during lunch, yell, “Oppa, what are you thinking about!” and look suspicious when he laughs out his reply.

But saying “art” isn’t even a lie.

Minghao has been booked pretty full at the shop all week, his afternoons spent texting Hansol between appointments. Pictures flood in, of sneakers on clinical tile, an eyebrow piercing he did  _ (“this would look good on you, hansolie”),  _ new jewelry that got delivered, a pouty frown peeking under a bucket hat with the caption,  _ want to get back into the studio. tomorrow can’t come soon enough. thinking about stars in your eyes and paint on your face. _

Hansol lies on the rug between his bed and his desk, and he knows Seungkwan and Sofia will kill him for it but he can’t stop himself from touching his face, his fingers skimming over his skin and remembering like an imprint, fingerprints, how it felt coming from someone else. 

The craving returns, and not the physical one, but the wave of wanting to write. To feel what he feels, love his family and his job and his rosebud relationship, and to make something of it. To stop borrowing words from other people and to put together something he can show, something  _ Hansol  _ that feels honest and true, his heart laid bare like Minghao does so easily.

He just wants to make something that lasts.

The problem is, when Hansol closes his eyes and tries to get the emotion out onto paper, something else bubbles out, gooey magma and all the words he’s grasped for getting lost and melting into cracks where his fingers can’t reach. So many half-fragments and semi-formed metaphors stumble onto the page, and it’s easier, a little, to put down the pen and pick up the phone and just let himself be overwhelmed in the best kind of way.

**minghao:** _ tomorrow is sunday. shop is closed… and no camp tomorrow, either, right?  _

The hot spring inside Hansol sends steam through his body at the suggestion. Not enough that it fogs him over, though, and he doesn’t beat around the bush.  _ do you want to come over? _

**minghao:** _ i do. i get the feeling more inspiration is imminent~ _

It would be cheap from anyone else, but there’s a sincerity to even Minghao’s most transparent flirting that works for him. His earnestness is palpable, everything he makes tinted with that honest smile. Hansol likes it a lot.

And for what it’s worth, ever since he met Minghao he’s had plenty of inspiration himself. The difficulty has been in giving that inspiration something worthwhile to hang itself on.

But before Hansol can type out a response, another set of pictures comes in. An old worn-parchment letter twice over, meticulously translated from French into hangul onto hand-pressed, recycled paper:

_ You are kind to painters and I tell you, the more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. … At present I do not think my pictures worthy of the advantages I have received from you. But once they are worthy, I swear that you will have created them as much as I, and that we are making them together. _

•

Desk chairs are probably not meant to hold this much weight, but Hansol’s mind is busy and so are both of his hands, marble and plaster indents in what little give the muscle of Minghao’s sides has. He tries to push up with his nose the catch of Minghao’s shirt, feeling a little like a dog pushing at the fabric, that warm, clean, acrylic-chalky  _ Minghao _ smell everywhere.

“A little help,” Hansol asks, and Minghao obliges, tugging it off by the back of the neck. Beautiful, chrome-gold exposed skin meets air, meets eyes, meets lips.

Minghao laughs breathily, murmuring, “That’s go- _ -ood! Oh!” _ It tears a keen from his throat when Hansol’s lips catch on one of his nipple piercings. His back arches, and Hansol’s hands tighten on his hips, thumbs pressing into where he knows those tattoos lie under Minghao’s waistband. “Solie…”

Hansol looks up at Minghao’s face where it’s pink at the edges, his eyes hopelessly fond. “Hyung, what do you want? What can I do for you?”

Sweet like taffy, languid and overwhelming in a way where Hansol wants it to stick in his teeth, Minghao’s face scrunches cutely, and he leans down, touches his nose to Hansol’s. “I like this.”

“Like this?” Hansol repeats, his grin giving way to an openmouthed kiss against Minghao’s clavicle, another on his sternum, the last against his chest, where his tongue gently traces the shape of the little silver barbell.

Nodding frantically, Minghao exhales sharply and punctuates it with a giggle. “Keep going.” 

One of his hands finds its way to the back of Hansol’s head, thumb tracing the short shaved hairs between the bigger blocks of color. His eyes sparkle, stars closer than Hansol ever thought he’d get to be.

Reaching up, an echo of Minghao’s hand, Hansol lets a thumb rub over a forgotten smear of dried paint, a swipe of green cracking over a spot behind Minghao’s ear. Some of the acrylic coats a nearby tuft of hair, grass standee among a burgundy field. “How did you miss this?” Hansol asks softly, running his short nails over it. “That’s so cute.”

Hansol wants to search his body for it all, hands and mouth, a scavenger hunt of the first degree.

“I feel like I always have some hidden somewhere.” Bashful, Minghao leans into Hansol’s touch, gasping out a half-bitten  _ hnh!  _ when Hansol’s hand slides back, nails scraping gently over the skin of the back of Minghao’s neck. “Babe. Hansol-ah,” Minghao whines, hips bearing down between the frame of Hansol’s hands. “My neck is sensitive!”

A pool of heat collects in Hansol’s belly. “I know, hyung. S’hot.”

Minghao whines again, an embarrassed groan, and pitches forward to bury his face in Hansol’s neck. Hansol laughs, coaxing a breathless sort of giggle out of Minghao, whose hand on the back of his head is constantly moving, fingertips running soft over his hair, field-of-wheat.

The curve of Minghao’s back leads, a bare line among graphite, down to where he’s moving in Hansol’s lap. Hansol leans him back to get at more of him, relishes the pink high on his cheeks, keeps his hands circled behind Minghao’s waist. He trails his tongue over stripes of ink like paint, Basquiat and something just Minghao blanketing the definition of Minghao’s chest.

“The—this reminds me of this sculpture,” Minghao says. It drops from his lips like it’s something filthy, like it’s not the first time he’s imagined it. “Rodin’s  _ Eternal Idol.  _ Made me feel less like,  _ ah,  _ like I wanted to be a sculptor and more like I wanted to be the sculpture. Always wanted to feel like that.”

“Yeah?” Hansol wants to feed into Minghao’s train of thought, tries to remember if he’s ever seen it, kisses and licks at titanium and skin.

Minghao nods some more, lets out a breathless laugh when Hansol tugs at the barbell with his teeth. “I’ll show you sometime. You’ll like it.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

Things go a little quiet, then, the lo-fi of Hansol’s playlist filling space between the click of teeth against metal, the wet sound of his mouth working, the panted, high-pitched noises shaking out of Minghao, more frequent with each passing minute. It’s desperate and giddy, Minghao’s gentle caress of his hair grounding Hansol in a way that almost makes him forget how hard he is.

“Good?”

Minghao grins and leans forward, his forehead knocking against Hansol’s. “So good.”

“You wanna—?” meaning,  _ you gonna? _

Minghao nods, presses a grateful kiss to Hansol’s lips, and leans his head back again, the long line of his jaw-neck-chest-stomach a canvas, moonlight melting into color just under his collarbone. Hansol returns the kiss onto the side of Minghao’s jaw, working his way down, bare skin into ink.

Tracing the lines of Minghao’s body with his nose, his cheek, his tongue seemed so beyond reach before, which, in hindsight, feels really goddamn foolish. Minghao made no secret of his feelings for Hansol, nor vice versa, but there was just something so…  _ “Artistic?”  _ Minghao will tease later, with that knowing smile that Hansol knows means he feels the exact same way, about letting it all simmer. It sounds a little contrived, but it wasn’t for anyone else, it was for them, so Hansol can’t be bothered to try to explain it to Seokmin, who hates waiting to confess, much less to anyone else Hansol likes far less.

So he gets his mouth on Minghao, finds all the places where he’s sensitive, which so far seems to be, unbearably,  _ everywhere, _ but mostly his neck and his ears and his nipple piercings and the webs of his fingers and the inner crease of his thigh, not that Hansol is cataloguing, and listens to Minghao get louder as he rocks his hips down against him.

And if Hansol could speak, could reach past his thundering heartbeat to the place where he’s wanted this so badly, he wonders if it would come out like  _ pencil smudged on the tip of your nose/ and I want to be graphite/ or ink or paint or anything else/ that could conceivably/ get stuck that close to your face.  _ Wonders that he can’t get closer than this, Minghao moaning openmouthed and beautiful against his body, and when Minghao says shakily, “I’m so close, ah,  _ babe,”  _ Hansol can’t bear to say anything for the wonder of it all.

Hansol’s hand finds its way again to the nape of Minghao’s neck, fingers combing through shaggy hair, thumb brushing over the shell of Minghao’s ear, and suddenly Minghao’s voice drops, vocal fry coating the long  _ ohh  _ that melts like honey out of him as he trembles, hips kicking, and gasps as he comes.

He knows he’s smiling when Minghao catches his breath and pulls back, because his bright-red edges bloom inward into a bright laugh, giggly and sweet. Hansol leans up and kisses Minghao, feels Minghao’s worshipful hands wander his face and body, and lets him murmur against his mouth, “Ah, Solie.”

It sounds like wonder.

•

The last day of a camp session always feels a little like the last day of school to Hansol. This thrumming excitement with a sort of pressure, asking yourself if you’ve done everything you could to make this special, wanting to make sure you’ve made the most of it all. Less hoping people remember you and more hoping they remember what you shared together.

“Oppa,” Hyejee shrieks, waving her blue-stained hands wildly, “Can I have more blue?”

“On it,” Hansol grins, and hustles over with the tempera. The little bowl full of blue between her easel and Kangseob’s is tipped over, blue splattered on both of their shoes, though admittedly there is less of it on the floor than on their easels, at least.

Minghao is crouched down, showing Areum on his own little canvas what his favorite techniques are, his hands probably the width of her face as they swirl and cut through thick layers of color, leaving black lines swiped clean through on the diagonal. Areum is giggling, her tiny hands karate chopping at her masterpiece, flinging a minty teal over her smock and into Minghao’s hair. He’s laughing too.

Today’s activity was his idea, fingerpainting on prepped, black-treated canvases. Something he’d been ruminating on;  _ when darkness ends, fill the world with vivid colors.  _ That embrace of every part of him and the knowledge that he can put color and light and warmth back into the world, that there is a kindness to himself he does when he acknowledges the darkness and doesn’t let it limit him. That out there all he has are feelings.

And the way the campers all gasped when they came into the studio after lunch made it all worth the hours they had spent the night before prepping the canvases, moving some of Minghao’s works in progress, and setting up the space.

At the last minute, Minghao’s hand pulls back where it grasps for Hansol’s wrist as he passes with a new bowl of green for Kangseob. “Hey,” he says, buoyant and sweet.

“Hi,” Hansol says. “I’m glad you were able to come.” The whole of his body feels like a tilt-a-whirl, the watery, plasticky smell of tempera paint everywhere, in his lungs, his brain, his heart.

“I wouldn’t have missed it.” Minghao swipes a paint-wet thumb over Hansol’s jaw, tongue between his teeth to stifle a grin. It’s not working. He looks handsome.

“Yah, hyung,” Hansol laughs, scuttling away to head over to the easels at the other end of the room, making no effort to remove the paint from his face.

Jaehee, watching the exchange, frowns and waves Hansol over. “Oppa, your face is messy.” Hansol kneels beside her easel and she wipes at his jaw with her little hands, grunting with dissatisfaction when her hands get messy from the paint on his face. She wipes them on her smock and sighs, woebegone past her years.

“Thank you, Jaehee,” Hansol smiles, taking a wet paper towel to the rest of his face. He’s a little sad to see the mint go, if he’s honest.

Tiny fists wave handfans at their canvases to dry the thick, gloopy blobs of paint their hands smeared across the black expanses, bright yellows and pinks and flowers and stars and smiley faces and portraits of their families. 

“Who was your favorite artist you learned about these last three weeks?” Minghao asks the room over an armful of paint bowls.

A chorus, a cacophony, rises like the tide to meet him. “I like Chang Ucchin!” “Is it true Van Gogh cut off his ear?” “Mona Lisa is boring!” “You, oppa!”

Hansol’s heart swells and swells and swells, turning their waves into a riptide.

Maybe this is the thing he makes that lasts. Whatever tempera-paint handprint Hansol has put on these kids’ lives is more important than his fear of not making something that matters. 

There’s some perspective, huh? When Hansol looks back at Minghao, Minghao is already looking at him.

“After this… Uh, would you like to read something I wrote?” he asks.

Minghao’s face lights up, and his eyes flick toward the campers and back like he wants to kiss Hansol. Hansol thinks he would let him if he tried. “I’d love to.”

And Hansol thinks of his notebook, binding almost bursting with words and words and words, and lets Minghao’s smiling eyes trace his face, and thinks maybe that can be art, too.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> for a retrospective on this piece, including inspiration and references, head to [dreamwidth](http://pixiepower.dreamwidth.org/830.html)!
> 
> find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/pixiepowerao3) and [curiouscat](http://www.curiouscat.me/pixiepower/)!


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